1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method for measuring the concentration of a substance in a minute region of a living body and a device for measuring the same concentration.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a conventional measuring method and a measuring device of the concentration of a substance in a living body, some tissues are taken out as a sample of the living body, and some fluorescence indicators to be chemically reacted with the living body are added to the sample so that by detecting the fluorescence response from the fluorescence indicators with a CCD camera, the concentration of the substance in the living body is measured. In this case, since the CCD camera is employed so that the fluorescence response can be measured as an image, the concentration distribution of the substance can be measured over the sample.
Generally, the sample is obtained by slicing the living body, but in the use of a confocal microscope, since the focus can be matched to a given depth by controlling the focal length, a bulky sample may be employed without slicing.
In the conventional measuring method and measuring device of the substance concentration, however, since the sample is taken out of the living body, the condition of the sample may be different from the condition that the sample remains in the living body. Moreover, since the fluorescence indicators are added over the sample, the sample can not be held for a long time after the substance concentration measurement, so that the successive measurement of the fluorescence response from the sample can not be performed.
In this point of view, instead of preparing the sample by slicing the living body, such an attempt is made as to insert a measuring probe directly into the living body and to measure the fluorescence response directly from the living body. In this case, however, a complicated optical alignment is required.